Done. Whew!

The quest for next year's curriculum is over. I'm not sure that I did it all the best way, but if I didn't, it wasn't because I didn't obsess over it all enough. However, I've pulled the proverbial trigger, and it is all on order, and on its way.

First, we evaluated foundational curriculum. The spine of it all, if you will. I looked at Tapestry of Grace, Sonlight, and Veritas Press. I am convinced I could not have gone wrong with any of them. They are all wonderful and thorough curriculums. We settled on Sonlight for a few reasons. First of all, unlike Veritas Press, our times/needs were in sync. We will be ready to begin world history over again, starting with the ancients. I would have been able to do that if I jumped Nathan up a year, but I wasn't sure if it would work with Annie. Tapestry allows you to do any of it any time, which is wonderful. I seriously contemplated using Tapestry. I made lists of the books used for each curriculum and compared them. I really like a lot of the features of Tapestry, and one of my best friends uses it and it works well for her. The bottom line, however, is that I'm familiar with Sonlight and how it works. I've gathered that Tapestry is a bit more work and because I don't have children widely spaced in age, I'm not sure it is necessary. So, in all, comfortable won, and I ordered Core 6 from Sonlight. Because Nathan is a quick and avid reader, I looked at "The Well-Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer and compared it to Tapestry of Grace books and ordered a few more books to supplement Sonlight's books. I found some used and was able to get them for just a bit more than a song.

After several years of grammar trials, last year we tried Rod and Staff and we loved it. It is absolutely wonderful and I'll thank Staci for a very long time for recommending it to us. So, Annie will use the 5th grade one from this year, and I ordered a 6th grade grammar set for Nathan. This will be supplemented by Sonlight's LA program.

For science, I read board after board, review after review, and narrowed it down to four programs: Science 4 Kids, Rainbow Science, Apologia, and Noeo. Then, because I felt they need a really general, all encompassing program at this point, I was able to select two of those: Rainbow and Apologia. We looked at them and evaluated them. I asked Nathan what he thought and his answer was to get the one with the most experiments. Ha! I would like to finish it this year, so we ordered Apologia General Science from Sonlight. It is 7th grade, but I think it is completely doable for them.

On to math....ugh! Annie was easy...she will do what Nathan did this year, Horizons 5 via Sonlight. Done. Nathan, however, is another story. I looked and looked and AGONIZED over it. I talked Clay's ear off, poor guy, until his eyes glazed over and I think he was about to run away. Nathan is pre-algebra/algebra, depending on the program. Chalk Dust is an amazing program, but a bit pricy. Not knowing how taxes would turn out, I was not sure about the cost, and not confident I could put it together well enough from used sources. I evaluated Teaching Textbooks, which looks great, but their Algebra I was essentially the same as some of the others' PreAlgebra. That's fine as long as I know what I've got, but I'm not sure where that leaves me later on. I'd like to stick with the same curriculum for awhile to prevent concepts from slipping through the cracks. So, I ended up ordering Life of Fred Decimals and Beginning Algebra, and also Jacobs Algebra, which I was able to procure from Amazon at a fantastic used price. Jacobs is recommended for 7th grade in Veritas Press, therefore, I'm thinking I'm going to be thrilled. He wasn't too keen on having a video instructor (I've still got him thinking I can do it....yikes!) so that pretty much settled the decision.

Now, orders have been placed with Life of Fred, Amazon, Sonlight, and Rod and Staff, and I'm ready to focus on wrapping up the current year.